Our July retreat season is underway and what a pleasure it is to gather together in person with our far-flung community at the Trinity Conference Center in beautiful West Cornwall, Connecticut! Our first retreat, which was an open retreat, focused on cultivating gratitude, and our second retreat, which is happening now, is for our seventh cohort of rabbis. Here are a few highlights of the retreat on gratitude:

An early morning walk by the Housatonic River with banks of orange lilies, sightings of herons and a beaver waddling between the rocks at the river edge.

Observing how the process of asking questions about the Torah portion – and not answering them – transformed a strange fairy tale with a talking donkey and things happening in threes into profound insights about experiencing Divine guidance and skillful responses to obstacles and ambivalence.

Watching a whole roomful of people from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds open their hearts in song.

Exploring real obstacles to gratitude, such as being uncomfortable with receiving from others or confronting challenging situations, and how we and Jews in ages past have tried to overcome these obstacles.

Savoring trout that was caught that same morning, along with cold mint pea soup, fresh local tomatoes with pesto, salad with raspberries and walnuts, seitan with a ginger sauce, roasted carrots and “white chocolate blackberry dream” (which is exactly what it sounds like).

Welcoming our beloved Shabbat with radiance and joy.

Learning that the Hebrew work for “thanking” (lehodot) can also mean “acknowledging” and practicing saying “thank you” or “Yes, this too” to whatever arises, through prayer, yoga, meditation and traditional texts.

Using freshly picked rosemary, thyme and sage as the spices for Havdallah.

If you were at this retreat (or if you have been at other retreats at Trinity), what have been some of your highlights?

Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the gift of Torah, begins on Saturday night. The Torah itself describes this occasion as being accompanied by dramatic and terrifying noise and spectacle: thunder, long shofar blasts, earthquake, fire and smoke. As I type this, I am listening to the honks and sirens on Seventh Avenue far below, and I wonder: if Mt. Sinai were in New York City, would anyone notice if God started proclaiming?

Mt. Sinai, of course, is in the middle of the desert, a place of profound and almost absolute quiet. Some people say that the Hebrew word for desert, midbar, means “a place of speech.” That sounds completely counter-intuitive unless you consider that a desert is a place that is so quiet that we might finally hear the Speech that is actually there all the time. And in fact, there are midrashim, or rabbinic stories, that say that God is always speaking at Sinai, but that on the day Torah was given, the 6th of Sivan so long ago, the desert was completely silent so that we could really hear.

Contemplative Jews (including me) love those midrashim. To a contemplative person, silence is clearly the better context to hear the voice of truth. It is in the silence that the noise of life can settle down and reveal the hidden wisdom that grows underneath. So why does the Torah text itself insist that the Torah was given in the midst of so much clamor?

Perhaps it was the setting. Perhaps it was the extreme contrast between the quiet desert and the thunderous mountain that startled the Israelites into the possibility of hearing something new. In that case, in our noisy lives, the contrast of stillness may be exactly the thing that startles us into that same possibility.

My intention for this Shavuot is to engage in some great Torah learning, to spend time with dear friends and to eat some New York cheesecake. It is also to find a quiet corner, even in this frenetic city, to see if maybe I can hear something unexpected and true.